At the turn of the century, three developments completely changed the way we viewed and thought about zombies in popular culture. First, there was the Resident Evil remake on the Nintendo GameCube in March 2002, followed by 28 Days Later in November 2002, and finally, the Dawn of the Dead remake in 2004. I could go on a diatribe about how vital Resident Evil is to the modern idea of Zombies, but 28 Days Later, a film that came out right after the September 11th attacks, changed the way we perceived zombies and what they’re used for, bringing our societal issues and fears to light. In this post-war on-terror world, what were we afraid of?
The start of the film just shows Cillian Murphy wandering around an empty London and coming face to face with these completely savage people with whom he couldn’t communicate and who wanted to attack him violently. He finds this small group of people to try and survive with; I always felt – and I learned others did that this is what the Western world felt about terrorism and how they couldn’t wrap their heads around such violence invading their world.
That first film is so impactful and effective. It made a lot of money, and, of course, we got a sequel that, for me, didn’t make sense. However, it was after that film that things changed. We’ve been in a zombie glut for almost twenty-five years, starting with Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic book, which came out a few years after the film adaptation, and continuing through the TV series made from it, as well as The Last of Us, both as a game and now an HBO show. There are so many zombie-related things that the list would be pages and pages long, and the fact that it gave us the FAST ZOMBIE has forever changed the pop culture world.
After all this time, it seems like Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland, who’s now an established Director in his own right, came back to the franchise that kicked both of their careers to another level. With 28 Years Later, they come back to the world they created, where this Rage virus started in the UK and destroyed civilization there as these rage zombie-like humans kill and change normal humans into rage-infected humans. Now, Great Britain is wholly cut off from the world — quarantined by the rest of the developed world, with those who live within England having to fend for themselves.
The film begins with a family living on an island just outside the mainline, connected by a causeway that can only be traversed during low tide. Their community is heavily fortified with people who go out and scavenge on the mainland, which is not too far from the shore. A father, Jamie, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, takes his twelve-year-old son Spike, played by Alfie Williams, on his first hunt on the mainland. It is a coming-of-age ritual that people in the community observe, yet Jamie is doing this, ignoring the protest of his mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), who is ill and not always in her right mind.
After a harrowing experience on the mainland with his father, he loses his innocence at the celebration that follows but discovers a doctor who lives on the mainland. He sneaks out of the community with his mother to find this doctor so that she can receive the help she needs. In video game terms, the story goes from The Last of Us to Ico, where we now have Spike having to protect his mother as they traverse the mainline to stay safe from all the different types of infected humans, with the most dangerous being an “Alpha,” a big strong male that likes ripping off heads with their spinal cord still attached like Sub Zero in Mortal Kombat. He’s later called Sampson, but seeing him chasing our heroic White English characters being this giant savage Black guy who could also be a South Asian man made me feel very uncomfortable. I didn’t like it.
Jodie Comer is great as this woman who slowly loses herself completely as the illness worsens during this quest. Alfie, who plays Spike, is the star of this movie, and he’s very empathetic. Spike, going through this world trying to figure out how to survive while being a literal child on screen with his bow and arrow always in over his head, has a great arc to watch.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson delivers a strong performance, but his role, while important, isn’t a central part of the film for the bulk of it. Once you get past the first act, he’s gone. Edvin Ryding plays Erik Sundqvist, a NATO soldier who ends up getting stuck on the mainland and is the only one of his team to survive an attack by the infected despite having all their guns and not using grenades. These guys shoot worse than Cobra Troopers on an episode of G.I. Joe. He ends up saving Spike and Isla and joins them for a part of their journey. This is Spike’s first experience dealing with someone outside of their community, and it serves as a way for Spike and the audience to at least hear how much the world differs from what Spike knows and experiences.
Erik’s life is just like ours with food delivery apps and thin smartphones, and it adds to the tragedy of this world as the world just moved on without the Brits, just left them to hell on Earth. This resonates with just how much of our world is consumed by horrible tragedies in other countries, yet we still go to work and get excited over things like video game consoles and Netflix dating shows.
The filmmaking style remains consistent with the first film, as it can transition seamlessly between a more cinematic look and a digital video aesthetic, particularly in action sequences. They do a lot of rotating angles when characters take out infected, giving it a very video game look. While the film is kinetic, Boyle does well with the character parts, which are quieter and allow the acting to work well off each other, making it easier to care about these characters.
I say all that, and I was invested in the movie until the very end, but it concluded in such a way that, upon reflection, I just ended up disliking the film more and more. The film had me continually asking questions about the world; I don’t think the original ever did. Why are there different types of infected people now? Why are they mostly East Asian-looking? Why are the two Alphas we see so different from each other? We see a pregnant infected woman by the way all the infected are naked all the time – which led me to think they mate? How does that work? Why? The tonal shift after what felt like a perfect ending, with Spike making a choice that was open yet felt like the end of the story, is then followed by a new beginning before the credits start. We see Jack O’Connell in an Adidas jumpsuit and wearing a terrible blonde wig as a character named Jimmy.
See, Jimmy is a character we first meet at the very beginning of the film, taking us back to how the very beginning of this world started with a young boy being the only survivor of a whole house of survivors being all infected as his father in a church – a priest seeing this as the final judgment and the end of the world accepting his soon to come end while pushing Jimmy to escape. While the beginning didn’t feel like it had a real connection to the film, you get it at the end, as it sets up more stories and another film. I didn’t know anything about this being the start of a new trilogy of films. I was like, what is this? They had an excellent movie here, even with all the questions going through my head, but then this nonsense happened.
As I see it, since I’m posting my review later than others, many people loved it, even those I saw it with. It’s great Tomato Score shows me that I’m in the minority. The standard coming-of-age heroic quest angle yet in a zombie movie setting is cool, I guess, but after almost a quarter century of zombie stuff, is it that much better than seeing what Carl went through in The Walking Dead? Either version. Am I getting something more out of this than Ellie being trapped in an old mall trying to protect a seriously injured Joel while looking for antibiotics in The Last of US: Left Behind DLC?
Ralph Fiennes pops up as a surprise as Dr. Ian Kelson and brings some real heft to the story in its later sections. As a person who knows the world before and after, he brings a wise, sage figure to Spike’s journey and can help him understand the life lessons from all the things he’s gone through. He wasn’t in it too long or short, just the right amount. Even with some more questions it had me asking, I was cool, but then more foolishness happened. Like damn, we were good, Boyle and Garland.
I really wanted to like 28 Years Later, and I did through most of it. I think everyone did a great job making this, even with some glaring misses in visual messaging. Yet, for me, that ending to make this a new start instead of a perfect closing chapter of the whole thing took me out of it all. I don’t think I’ll recommend it to others, and I’ll let them enjoy their new thing, but for me, this is a skip and something I wish I hadn’t wasted my time on.
Score: D
